If you do not already know, s
ince September 2017, I have been a college student in a library and information technician program online through distance education. The end of the program involves two library placements. I previously blogged about my first library placement that I did at an academic library. I just finished my second library placement on Tuesday, which I did at a public library, and I am now finished my entire library and information technician program! I am so excited to be done my program and have realized that I definitely made the right decision of choosing this program. Library work is well suited to me. I have seen this through my enthusiasm in both my courses and my placements. I love it so much!
At my second library placement, I had both similar and different experiences than my first library placement but even the experiences that were similar were still a bit different. Here is what I did:
Health and Safety: I went through health and safety training that employees and volunteers must complete. This involved a tour of the library, a staff member explaining health and safety procedures, and online courses (videos, text, and quizzes) with certificates.
Cataloguing and Physical Processing: I catalogued CDs, DVDs, fiction books, puzzles, and board games. I did physical processing for books, CDs, DVDs, audiobooks, puzzles, and board games. I also had to check the catalogue for DVDs that were donated to see if any of the library branches had them, which ones had them, and how many had them.
Archive Digital Folders: I organized newspapers that were digitized from microfilm into folders by week since they had already been organized by month.
Interlibrary Loan: I learned about how the interlibrary loan system usually works since, at the time of my placement, interlibrary loans were suspended, and I got to experience how it was working at the time. I still got to work with returns, reserves, check ins, shipping, shelf checks, patron requests, processing, and stats despite the suspension which is a lot more than I thought I would get to do.
Children's Collection: I learned about ordering/purchasing books and DVDs for the children's collection through various companies and even got to actually order some, with help from the staff member in charge of the children's collection, of course.
Weeding: I weeded the teen fiction section and the adult graphic novel section using lists that were given to me by staff. The books were either on the list because they had been checked out a lot and may not be in great condition or they had not been checked out in a while. I removed the books from the shelves and then went through them with staff members to see if any were worth keeping and withdrew the rest that the library wanted to get rid of and learned the different fates of withdrawn books. They may be just thrown away or they could be donated to a school that wants them or sold through library book sales or a specific organization that helps libraries sell books.
Technology: I helped update children's apps on iPads by restoring the purchases for all of them.
Makerspace: I learned about the different tools and aspects of the makerspace and how the makerspace functions when it comes to using tools and setting up workshops.
This library placement was so much fun and the staff were amazing. I got to have experiences in so many different departments and see just how much work goes into running a public library. There are so many details and it is fascinating how the work is distributed among staff in a large library. I am so glad that I had this experience and now feel even more confident with library work.
Cheers,
Kaylie
